landscape will remain unexcitingly stale and bound by this underestimation
and mindset.
Adjustment in Progress
Sorry if any bubbles are bursting here, but we have to wake up to the fact
that full cross-browser support of new technologies is just not going to
happen. Some users will still use older browsers and some users will still
have browsers with deactivated JavaScript or images; some users will be
having weird view port sizes and some will not have certain plugins
installed.
But that’s OK, really.
The Web is a damn flexible medium, and rightly so. We should embrace its
flexibility rather than trying to set boundaries for the available technologies
in our mindset and in our designs. The earlier we start designing with the
new technologies, the quicker their wide adoption will progress and the
quicker we will get by the incompatibility caused by legacy browsers. More
and more users are using more advanced browsers every single day, and by
using new technologies, we actually encourage them to switch (if they can).
Some users will not be able to upgrade, which is why our designs should
have a basic fallback for older browsers, but it can’t be the reason to design
only the fallback version and call it a night.